Sometimes you may need to read the top n lines of a file using Python.
We start by opening the file for reading and then using a list comprehension we iterate through the range of lines we want to return:
N = 10
filename = "file.txt"
with open(filename) as myfile:
head = [next(myfile) for x in range(N)]
print(head)
Another way you can do this is by looping through each line individually:
N = 10
filename = "file.txt"
file = open(filename)
for i in range(N):
line = file.next().strip()
print(line)
# make sure to close the file when you're done
file.close()
